My Perestroika - A Documentary Film by Robin Hessman

Robin Hessman’s intimate and lovely documentary … follows five classmates who came of age right before the Iron Curtain fell – the children of a vanished world. Charting the ways that time, memory, and a rapidly changing society have affected their lives, it’s playful, insightful, hypnotic, and, ultimately, superb.”

– Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine
(Chose My Perestroika as one of the “Twenty Very Best Movies at Sundance”)

“…profoundly insightful and overall stupendous …. My Perestroika must be considered one of the year’s best documentaries.”

- Stewart Nusbaumer, The Huffington Post

“…an intimate epic…..never fails to be engrossing”

– David Lewis, San Francisco Chronicle

“Robin Hessman’s debut feature is a documentary of considerable charm and nonjudgmental insight…Home movies and vintage propaganda footage fill out this lovingly crafted pic’s engrossing progress.”

– Denis Harvey, VARIETY

“…a powerful and surprisingly humorous examination of life under government control and a welcome insight into the day-to-day lives of a particularly captivating group of Russians.”

– Chris Kompanek, flavorwire.com
(Chose My Perestroika as one of the “Must-see Indie flicks at New Directors/New Films“)

“…a documentary so good at breaking the rules of historical docs that it makes you question why anyone ever follows them.”

– Mary Anderson Casavant, Filmmaker Magazine

“The great hallmark of Hessman’s film is its intimacy; her subjects, ranging from husband and wife school teachers to a punk-turned-subway busker to an international businessman, casually tell their own stories over vodka and home movies, with no top-down narration or intervention.”

– Karina Longworth, Village Voice/ LA Weekly

“My Perestroika, a terrific documentary by Robin Hessman…arrives at a comprehensive, powerful summation of the perennial instability of Russian life as a whole.”

– Robert Levin, amNewYork

“In Robin Hessman’s tender and revealing documentary, a group of ordinary Russians tell their own stories and shed light on their country’s dramatic past… Hessman…humanize[s] a subject that is so often treated with distance and an emotional measure of remove.”

– Mike Tully, Hammer to Nail

“Tightrope-walking between cultures during the Cold War’s thaw, Hessman possesses an East-West street cred that pays off in spades with her honestly reflective and unselfconscious subjects…thrilling viewing…”

– Lauren Wissot, Slant Magazine

“What is most remarkable about My Perestroika are not the poignant and surprising revelations about life in Russia, but the extreme level of intimacy that Hessman maintains in each interview.”

– Alicia Van Couvering, Filmmaker Magazine.com

“four stars…my favorite film of the young year…”

– Ethan Alter, NYCFilmCritic.com